The Speaker’s Race

On January 8, 2014, Council Member Melissa Mark-Viverito (CD8) was elected as Speaker of the City Council by her colleagues. The vote was unanimous, 51-0, and with it, Mark-Viverito became the first Latino, or person of color overall, to be elected Speaker. Mark-Viverito’s most serious foe in the race to become speaker was Council Member Dan Garodnick (CD4). See further below on this page for coverage of the speaker’s race over the course of several months leading up to the January 8th vote.

First, here are several articles recapping Mark-Viverito’s election as speaker:

The race to be the next Speaker of the New York City Council has been ongoing throughout the 2013 New York City election cycle, though it was not being decided upon by voters on November 5th. The next council speaker will be determined by council member votes as influenced by individual decision-making, council caucus decisions, County party negotiations, and input from others, such as Mayor-elect Bill de Blasio. Not necessarily in that order of importance. The 51 members of the new New York City Council will vote for a speaker on January 8th, 2014.

Below are the names of those vying to succeed Christine Quinn as Speaker of the City Council. The names appear as links to the council members’ DecideNYC.com profiles. Below the list of speaker “candidates” are several articles that have been written about the race to be the next Speaker. Sends us others and we’ll add them: DecideNYC@gmail.com

First, here are the details for the public council speaker candidate forums that we know of (keep in mind, some might require an RSVP to attend):